Secrets
by salt-rose
Summary: Everyone has their own secrets. Remus and Tonks slowly share theirs. (Vignettes--unfinished)
1. First Secret

First Secret  
  
She wears these ridiculous little Muggle underclothes underneath her robes, which she says she bought with another friend "for a gas" in a part of London that he's never even heard of. There are garters, of course, for each pair, and lacy thongs and silk knickers and these outrageous peek-a- boo bras that are so incredibly over the top and never fail to make his mouth dry or his pants suddenly too tight. Sometimes, as they're all sitting around the sitting room in 12 Grimmault Place planning what to do next, he'll wonder what she has on underneath her robes, or really if she has anything on at all, and he'll lose his entire train of thought. He is always angry at himself when this happens—what is he, a bumbling fourth year with raging hormones?—but he can never really stop it. 


	2. Second Secret

Second Secret  
  
He tells her once that Lily and James argued for a week over whether to make him or Sirius Harry's godfather. Lily, who had been his best friend before he was James' and Peter's and Sirius' missing link and was still sore at Sirius for a few of the more inappropriate jokes he had played on her, had remarked tartly that she would never be able to rest comfortable knowing that that prankster would have custody of her son if anything happened to them. When he found out that they were arguing about it, in his own quiet way, Remus saved them the trouble by telling them that he wouldn't accept the position if they asked him.  
  
"Why?" she wonders aloud as she traces patterns down the paths of his ribs, which protrude painfully from his too-thin chest. The blanket is fleecy and uncomfortable, without a softer, cooler sheet to go under it, and they are sweating in the summer heat.  
  
"Dora, you know why. I'm a werewolf. He couldn't possibly have lived with me. I could never have supported him."  
  
"I don't see why that should possibly matter," she says obstinately and rolls over in his arms so that he is spooned behind her, their legs threaded together.  
  
"What if I forget to take the Wolfsbane?"  
  
"When do you ever forget anything, Remus?"  
  
There is a long pause, and she relaxes against him, her breaths growing long and deep. He swallows against the sudden lump in his throat from feeling as if she is his family, from feeling so miserably alone for so long, from wondering how it, how he, would have been different if Harry had been his. "Still . . ." he whispers softly to himself, "I would have loved it . . ."  
  
"I know," she says sleepily. 


	3. Third Secret

Third Secret  
  
"What does it really look like?" he asks curiously one day, his limbs heavy and sated after lovemaking, his heart finally having slowed down to something approaching its regular rhythm.  
  
She tenses. "What does what really look like?"  
  
"Your face," he says.  
  
She does not answer for so long that he would have thought she didn't hear him but for her stiff presence in his arms. Finally she exhales a shaky breath onto his shoulder, and he can feel himself twitching into awareness once more, despite his earth-shattering climax moments before. What is it about her that made him lose control so easily? Padfoot and Prongs would be laughing themselves sick over this if they could see him, oversexed and totally wild for a punk-haired, rebellious Auror almost half his age.  
  
"It doesn't." She sighs. "That's what it's like being born an Animagimus. It's . . . we . . . don't have set looks. Before you learn control, you don't just look like one thing. You change without being able to control. There are ones that come back to you again and again, but it doesn't . . . I don't look like anything, really."  
  
He is stunned, and his werewolf heart swells with sympathy for her. It must be hard, he thinks, being a girl without a face (what must it be like to live without one?), but he doesn't know what he means to her and what she means to him and how to comfort her, so he settles for running his tongue up the salty path of her neck and hearing her sigh with pleasure. 


	4. Fourth Secret

Fourth Secret  
  
She giggles as he cranes his neck around backwards and snaps his teeth as if to bite at her. "A tattoo, Professor Remus?" she asks cheekily. They are still in the getting to know you stage, still mired in the world of Oh- sweet-Merlin-he-looked-at-me and stammered confessions and blushes, and his body still holds mysteries that she longs to discover, planes that can take her breath away with their beauty. She aches to know him fully.  
  
"You're not as tightly laced as some might think," she says, nipping playfully at the slight curve of his firm ass. She traces the lines of the phoenix that hovers over the base of his spine with her tongue, feeling his muscles tremble underneath her.  
  
He groans unintelligibly.  
  
"Hmm . . . ?" she asks archly, stretching her body slowly, tantalizingly over his so that her nipples brush against his back. Her lips find his ear, and she sucks gently, the way she's already discovered he likes.  
  
"James and Sirius and I—we went and got them one night. Right after school, seventh year, we were going to join the Ord—oh god, don't stop . . ." 


	5. Fifth Secret

Fifth Secret  
  
It is the anniversary of the first year, the first year alone again without Sirius, and everyone is pretending not to notice. Tonks is curled quietly in a chair in the edge of the room and pretending not to notice as he gets more and more drunk, toasting himself in front of the fire, the silent tears working down his cheeks. Finally, everyone else has left, and she crosses the room to stand next to him but ends up tripping over a footstool and cursing loudly. He does not move, so she comes over to stand behind him, her arms twining around his waist.  
  
"You know," he says, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation, "I was always a little bit in love with Sirius."  
  
She nudges his side with her cheek. "Remus, everyone was." 


	6. Six Secret

Sixth Secret  
  
She tells him that she loves him by accident.  
  
She has been brooding it over in the recesses of her heart. She means it, of course, but she did not mean to tell him. At least just yet, she reminds herself. For now, it was meant to be something to reassure herself with.  
  
It slips out one day when he brings her hot cocoa with five marshmallows, just the way he knows she likes it, so hot it burns her tongue, as he bends down to place a kiss on her cheek, right above the scratches she received when she tripped over a tree root and went sprawling when last on assignment. She can't stop the words; they feel right. He tenses, and his eyes become impossibly dilated, as they only do when he is inside her in the heartbeats before he starts moving. He doesn't say anything, just walks backwards out of the room, his eyes never leaving her face.  
  
But when she slips into his room that night, after losing an internal battle in which the rational part of her mind implored her to go home and the irrational part insisted that she was only staying to finish the first three hundred pages of Hogwarts: A History, which Hermione left on the table for Ron to "finally read, you great prat," he is still awake. He pushes the sheets aside for her to slide under them just as he does every night.  
  
Their lovemaking is harsher that night, fierce and wild and tinged with a hint of desperation that gnaws at her heart, even as she knows that it's now his place to address the question. But as he comes, he merely whispers her name.  
  
He will not tell her he loves her for another three months. 


	7. Seventh Secret

Seventh Secret  
  
He has thought about kissing her for weeks and weeks before actually works up the courage to do so, and even then, it is a light peck on the cheek that gets misdirected when she, confused, turns her head to look at him.  
  
It is after one of his transformations. Dumbledore, on one of his rare visits to the house, has cast all the spells he could think of on one of the upstairs attics so that he wouldn't have to leave during the full moon. It is comforting to know that his friends are near, but more than that, it is frightening. He is absolutely terrified the first time he transforms in the house, almost out of his human mind with worrying about whether the spells will hold, almost out of his werewolf mind with the smell of people.  
  
She unlocks the bolts and takes off the spells, early in the morning after the moon has set, to wrap another blanket around his shoulders and leave three cups for him, all piping hot: tea, and coffee, and some of Molly Weasley's famous chicken soup. (The secret ingredient, he has found out by watching her make it, is the Pepper Up potion Molly always slips into it.)  
  
She explains almost shyly—Nymphadora shy? he wonders feebly—that she didn't know if he still liked tea or if it had changed since he went to America for a few months after Sirius was imprisoned. She found some ground coffee in one of the back kitchen cupboards and managed to get it down and make some without breaking too many mugs. "But I'm really good at repairing charms," she says with a grin.  
  
He blinks a few times, then realizes from her expectant look that she must be waiting for some sort of response from him. He smiles a bit wanly and murmurs, "Nymphadora."  
  
"Tonks," she says firmly.  
  
He thinks that she can't possibly want him to call her by that ridiculous name. No fully grown woman (well, if he's perfectly honest with himself, at twenty four she's not really that fully grown, but he is rarely perfectly honest because that makes him remember how wholly unsuitable his attraction to her is) could possibly want to be called "Tonks." He raises himself up on an arm so that he is closer to her and says, "Thank you." He leans forward to brush a kiss against her cheek, and her head turns, and then their lips are touching, and he is lost.  
  
It is soft and gentle, nothing more than an exploration of each other's lips, the pressure almost non-existent, but his heart is pounding so hard that he can almost hear it through the ringing in his ears, and the exhaustion he thought would never leave is swept away in a frantic wave of heat that threatens to consume him.  
  
She breaks away first, her eyes wide and startled, her face still so close that he can just barely feel her breaths on his face. He can't help the glow of male satisfaction that arises when he hears how laboured they are, that he is not the only one effected by their almost-kiss.  
  
Her hair is wildly changing colors, first magenta, then blue, then the trademark black of her family, the wild tangled reds of the Weasleys, Draco Malfoy's pale, pale blond. He is entranced by the way it shimmers and then rearranges itself, the way it turns a deep auburn and the waves of gold that reached past her shoulders shorten so that they barely curl about her ears as she runs a hand desperately through it.  
  
She licks her lips, and he can feel his eyes dilating. "What—did you mean that? The—the kiss?"  
  
Of course he did, he thinks to himself, but he doesn't know whether to say it, whether the surprise he can read in her entire body is shock and horror or the sudden, unexpected realization of a secret hope. So instead he is silent, looking into her faded blue eyes. They have stayed the same color this whole time, he realizes.  
  
She stands up abruptly and almost runs out of the room. He is left on the floor with his blankets and three steaming mugs and a bone-deep ache that is more than the usual pain of a transformation. 


	8. Eighth Secret

Eighth Secret  
  
He has been avoiding her for weeks, it feels like, even though it can't have been more than a few days. A few days since that kiss, and everything has changed, but everything is still, still the same.  
  
She too has been avoiding him, she knows, subconsciously turning the other way when she hears him enter the hallway, flickering her eyes away whenever his twitch towards her. But she still flushes to the roots of her blue and black streaked hair whenever she is in the same room as him.  
  
"I'm going out."  
  
The fact that someone has spoken to her slowly registers in her brain as she sits reading a book on the Dark Arts in the library at 12 Grimmault Place. That voice, she knows that voi—Remus. The book falls off her lap as her numbed fingers lose their purchase in surprise. She looks at it, lying carelessly on the floor, with surprise and a bit of guilt because she knows how much he hates seeing anyone hurt books, and so she quickly kneels on the ground to pick it up and manages to bang her head on the coffee table when she is getting back up and spill most of the contents of her mug of tea.  
  
"Oh—bugger!" she sighs in frustration, then climbs back onto the sofa. Remus has been standing still in the doorway, looking at her with a bizarre expression on his face that can be disgust or amusement. She isn't sure whether she would be terribly delighted with either one.  
  
"Out?" she repeats stupidly. After all, she should be allowed this moment of stupidity. It is the first time he has spoken to her since their kiss and since she ran away from him. It was his own fault, she thinks savagely.  
  
"Out," he answers patiently, as he would to a child, and takes a few steps into the room, careful to look at anything but her. In the better lighting of the room, he appears tired and worn and rather disheartened, but she hardens her heart against him. She isn't the one who didn't answer, full moon or no. If he thinks he can use his sad, gorgeous brown eyes and the tired lines around his thoroughly kissable mouth to guilt her into feeling bad for him because it was only a few days after the full moon, and he looked so positively edible, and really, it was indecent for any man to have such sinful looking lips, he has another thing coming.  
  
"You look terrible." Damn it all! Hasn't she just said she wasn't going to care?  
  
The corners of his mouth twist up a bit into a wry sort of smile. "Thanks," he says softly. Then he blinks a few times and says rather stiffly, "Arthur and I are going out this evening. Now, really."  
  
"Oh. That kind of out." He inclines his head a little. "Well." She looks down at her tightly clenched fingers and sees how deceptively quiet they look. Perhaps after all, even though he's going out out, on a mission out, with Arthur, she can do this. "Don't let me keep you," she finally settles on and feels rather proud of herself because of how calm her voice sounds.  
  
There is a pause, and she is almost certain that he must have left, even though she hasn't heard his footsteps at all. "N'dora . . ." His voice is almost but not quite a whisper, husky and hoarse, and she shivers from the sound of it. Right. Definitely not gone yet. It is probably best, she worries, that she not look up, because then she will see those bottomless golden eyes and his sexily touseled hair, threaded with grey, and—  
  
"N'dora, won't you at least say goodbye to me?"  
  
At this she does look at him, and he does look just that good, and suddenly as he moves hesitantly towards the couch and her, she finds herself hurtling into his arms, burrowing her head in the juncture between his neck and his shoulders and just breathing, breathing. He smells like Remus, and she can't, for her life, think of anything as arousing as that in the world.  
  
They are kissing now, furiously, because he had nuzzled his way up the line of her jaw towards her mouth, and everything around her is on fire. Possibly he pushed her back onto the couch, or she grabbed his robes and pulled him down on top of her, but she can't remember which one. All that matters are the lines of flames he traces across her body with his slender hands, the possessive thrusts of his tongue into her mouth, the pressure of his hips against hers. The way they are mauling each other is positively indecent, she is sure, a jumble of moans and kisses and frantic groping that feels so good it ought to be illegal, probably is illegal, and is that the sound of someone clearing his throat?  
  
Remus has already disentangled his mouth and tongue from hers, and she feels lifeless and empty. His entire body flushes with heat that she can feel, not just see. "Oh, erm . . . hallo, Arthur."  
  
She can't see Arthur over the arm of the sofa, which is probably just as well, because she doesn't know how she will ever be able to face him as it is. But he sounds amused rather than appalled to find them in their current—predicament—and merely says mildly, "You know, I hear they have doors with locks on them for these sorts of things."  
  
Remus looks down, abashed, and she takes the opportunity to run her hand down the slim line of his chest because Arthur can't see it from where he's standing, and his abashed look turns into a glare that is so tinged with desire that she wants to throw Arthur out by the scruff of his neck and get back to much more interesting things.  
  
"I was thinking of leaving in about thirty minutes. Do you think you'll be ready by then?" he asks in an admirably straight tone.  
  
"I can be ready now," Remus says, making an effort to climb off of her, but Arthur interrupts.  
  
"Sometimes . . . there are more important things. Half an hour will be fine." And then he leaves and closes the door with a click, and they can hear him performing a locking spell on the other side.  
  
"That was embarrassing," Tonks says. Her hair is pink and short and spiky, as it always turns when she is extremely mortified.  
  
Remus runs a hand through it thoughtfully. "Cute hair," he says. There is a pause, and then he says, about the intrusion, "Could have been worse though. Maybe we should talk . . . ?"  
  
"Or maybe we shouldn't," she counters, drawing his mouth back to hers by grasping the lapels of his shirt.  
  
"Mmm," he agrees. 


	9. Ninth Secret

Ninth Secret  
  
He knows he loves her when he tells her that he is all wrong for her, that he is too old for her, and a werewolf, and a chronic failure at decent human relationships, and an old, irritable hermit. She slaps him across the face soundly, and he gasps more in shock than at the slight pain of it. and the sliding into place of so many different pieces that lead him to think, "oh, love, yes." She quickly pushes him back down onto the bed and covers his face with kisses all over, taking special care to linger over the portion that stings from her hand.  
  
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she whispers to his skin, to his lips and his eyes, between kisses, barely moving her mouth far enough from him to speak. Pulling back to look into his eyes, he can see hers fill with tears as she says, "It's just . . . you're not allowed to talk about yourself like that."  
  
He is amenable to this, and she must see it in his face, because she laughs a bit, laying her head on his chest, and says, "Besides, I only date older men." He wonders if he can possibly love her this much and not lose her. Given his past, he thinks not. 


End file.
